So we decided to create a bricks-and-mortar presence in San Diego.

Why now? Why at all? We’re doing well without a showroom. Why risk changing the mix?

Frankly, I simply felt like we needed to address how relevant we really are to our clients. Every single day, our customers ask, “Where can we see your fixtures?” and our salespeople have only been able to answer, “online.”

Since our business is retail design, we, more than most, realize how important touching and feeling a product is. Sure, consumers are getting more and more accustomed to buying online. But given the choice, I’d rather check pricing on the web and go to a “real” store to, as my grandmother used to say, “Feel da merchandise.” Further, we wanted to create a venue where our customers can immerse themselves in the retail experience. To that end, we decided to build a showroom that does just that. TRIO’s new showroom will showcase our retail display fixtures, house our design studio and libraries, and will provide an opportunity for our clients to interact with our packaging and POS specialists, all in one visit.

Additionally, we want to encourage an interactive retail community. One of my favorite stores in San Diego is Great News. This place started out as a small gift shop and over the past 20 years has evolved in to the greatest kitchen shop in town (and maybe the state). In addition to selling kitchen equipment, they hold cooking classes day and night in a 2,000-square-foot-classroom complete with large-screen TV monitors overhead. The place is packed with people having fun and feeding their passion.

We want to build a similar retail community. So we are setting up an auditorium in our new showroom that will be used for regular seminars and workshops on store design and planning. I’ll teach some of them and we’ll bring in various speakers to enlighten our clients on every aspect of the retail business. We’ll also have videos of many of the seminars available for you to watch in our showroom, plus a full library of books on retail design and planning to browse and purchase.

The store is in Sorrento Valley, a commercial area just north of San Diego. It’s close to the coast and just off interstate freeways 5 and 805. We’re in a semi-rural setting and we think our customers will appreciate how easy it is to get here, park, shop and learn at their leisure.

Over the next two months I’ll take you through our design and construction issues and review some of our challenges in the decision-making process. I hope you’ll be able to learn from our experience so that you’re better-equipped to handle your own move into retail.

Jeff Grant
TRIO
President

Next:
Finding the location. Where to locate, what kind of a building, the competition, rents, acting fast…